the weekend & other musings

Why are weekends so darn short, even a four day one flew by & before I knew it, it was Sunday night. The night when you get that horrible foreboding feeling in the pit of your stomach.

First off Thanksgiving went great! We had such a wonderful time. The big fricking turkey came out great!  All our pies turned out awesome & everyone had a roaring time! We had great dinner conversations about wenius and waginias & about how honey badgers don't give a sh@#.
 Sawyer had a blast, he ate the whole shabang & love every minute of it!
 Although I realized the other morning that in all the chaos at our house, I forgot to call my parents & wish them a Happy Thanksgiving! I know, I know, I totally blew the daughter of the year award. I need to call them & grovel tell them I am thankful for them (parents if you are reading this, I am so am!).
I also totally blew it on taking pictures. These are all she wrote - by the time people started arriving at the house, all thoughts of photo ops flew from my mind. Although I know other people were pointing and shooting, so I may be redeemed.

       

We got talked into going to Walmart at 10:30 Thanksgiving night! It was an adventure, especially after having a few glasses of wine & a few beers. It was total chaos! People were running through the store with their arms full, trying to make it to their cart as their stuff went flying all over the place.

Friday we got up and showed up to TinselTown Christmas Tree Farm. We love that place & have been getting our trees there for years. I think we were their first customers. The kids had a blast & of course we found the perfect tree way in the back of the lot, so Steven had to haul it all the way back up. 

We had to do something this year that we have never had to worry about before, check the height of the tree. Our ceilings in the house are only 8ft compared to the 15 plus feet of the apartment. When we brought it home we still had to cut like 2-3ft off just to make it fit. At first it looked so small because I am used to humungoid trees that we have to use a ladder to decorate. We did not even use all our ornaments!

The kids loved pulling out all the Christmas stuff from the boxes, especially the lights.

Saturday I spent the day doing dishes....it totally sucked.

There you have it another accomplished weekend! We even were lucky enough to get the game through our digital converter box (that never works) on Sunday!

Big fricking turkey!

We had a productive weekend. I actually felt accomplished Sunday night, which sometimes  is a rarity.
We got up early Saturday morning and headed off to do our turkey shopping. We filled up two carts! Two carts people!
We found the turkeys at the bottom of a standing freezer. Can you believe the store had none in their nice meat section with their chest like freezers, where it is easier to find the one you want. Where you could simply bend over and move them with ease.
No, we pretty much had to get on our hands and knees to even see into the shelf.
See, we were not looking for just any turkey, we were looking for a big fricking turkey!
We started handing over turkeys after checking their weight like we were part of a production line. Each of us pulling the tags and reading the weights out loud. Steven & I were totally immersed in the freezer. With just our butts sticking out, I am sure we were sight. After accosting like 20 turkeys and stacking 10 of them on the floor. We finally saw it way in the back, the motherload of all turkeys, the notorious 24 pounder!
This baby is huge! This will be our 5th year hosting Thanksgiving. We will have to see if we top last years!
We need a big fricking turkey! If we cooked a regular sized one we would have an uproar, a revolution, it would not be pretty! Last year we ate an entire 22 pound turkey in one sitting. No left over turkey sandwiches, no turkey omelets,  leftover turkey this or leftover turkey that last year. All that was left at the end of the night was a picked clean turkey carcass, I think even some of the bones were missing!
 This year we will actually have some elbow room. We have graduated from our small apartment where we would stuff in 25 people. We will actually get to have a sit down at a table dinner. Last year everyone just popped a squat where they could. We had people in the living room, dinning room and even in the kitchen. The whole apartment was the dinner table! And to top it all off our oven in the apartment stopped working the night before Thanksgiving right in the middle on baking pies! Thank goodness for the maintenance guy that was nice enough to find us one in a vacant unit at 9pm. I am hoping this one we will get a breather......
I am thankful for this big fricking turkey, our family that we love so dear even as they stand in the kitchen and ask every 20 minutes when dinner is or if it is done yet,  my husband who rocks and makes the best darn big fricking turkey and cheesecake every year, for my kids that love this holiday as much as we do & love helping stuff the big fricking turkey, because their mom gets grossed out shoving her hand up a turkey's butt, to nieces and nephews that make prank calls to everyone in your cell phone phonebook on Thanksgiving night, asking them if their refrigerator is running or if they like to wear lipstick, to family members that lift up their dresses to show you a bruise on their stomach, but forgot they were not wearing underwear, yes I am thankful for all these things because I look forward to whatever comes our way and I love our family because they make our lives what they are & I would not want to change a thing. So here's to you Thanksgiving and all that it may bring!

Dog Food Fight

I have no idea why my children are so infatuated with dog food. It's not like I sat down & munched on it as a snack when I was pregnant. Sebastien was about 10 months when we found him sitting along side Junior (our long lost oldie doggie) in the kitchen and snapped a picture. When I uploaded the photos from the camera onto the computer & started looking through them, I noticed something peculiar about this photo. Sebastien had his face turned to the camera with a big open mouthed smile, when I zoomed in on his mouth I saw a big ole' mouth full of dog food! Yuck, great, everyone is going to think I feed my kid dog food. We have shown this picture to Sebastien & he was not impressed.
So when  I searched for this photo & could not find it in any of our files, I asked him about it & he just laughed at me. I really don't think he erased it... 4 year olds can't do that right?...unless he knew it was in our revenge file.

Anyways....

Which brings me to this,  I was not surprised when I walked into the kitchen to this.......

Thankfully Sawyer has not been in the kitchen at the same time when there has been food in the bowl but he sure thinks Charlee's bowls are the best things since puffed cereal & tries his darnedest to get that bowl in his mouth.

Note to self: clean out Charlee's bowls more often they are way too gross!

Look at the time

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."     Jack Burrough

In our hectic lives, we never take a moment to sit back & realize just what we are missing. We are to busy doing this or that, having to do laundry, make dinner, feed a baby, take the dog out, make lunches, rushing off to work, to make time where we really need it.

Sebastien has been asking me for weeks to sit down with him & play with some playdoh. I have always had an excuse & told him maybe tomorrow. Well tomorrow kept coming & going.

Tonight when he asked me again, I decided to make the choice to make some time with him. Dinner could wait, dishes could wait & baths could wait. I sat back as he played & I realized that his childhood is really a short time to enjoy all these things, because when he gets older he is not going to ask his mother to sit & play with him anymore. He is not going to want to sit, jockey everyone else for the best position, & cuddle with you or hell even be around you. I realized that I need to make time for the things that are really important in my life. I needed to sit back and prioritize my outlook on the daily things that needed to be done in our household. I have been neglecting the most important ones.

We sat in the kitchen & had the time of our lives. The only thing that was sacrificed was that the plates had to wait until tomorrow to be cleaned

No more Sawyers jumping on the bed...

one fell off & bumped his head.
Yesterday was not a good day.
Mornings in our house are chaotic at best. Some mornings are better than others. It starts at 5:10am when I finally drag myself out of bed after hitting the snooze button too many times. Sometimes the mornings start earlier depending on Sawyer's alarm clock, his stomach. His model unfortunately did not come standard with a snooze option.
Remember the last post about the teething being no problem, well I obviously did not knock on wood hard enough. This last week he has been getting up every 2-3 hours & wanting to eat. Either these teeth are some major doozies or he is going through the biggest growth spurt & before I know it I am going be lugging a linebacker around.
We rush through the morning, me throwing clothes everywhere trying to figure out what to where to work and cursing myself for not thinking of this the night before, getting Sebastien dressed, Sawyer feed, changed & dressed. I blow dry my hair for all of a minute & 30 seconds, half ass my makeup application, & argue with Sebastien about the importance of brushing his teeth (this happens every morning people!) All the while Charlee sits in the background crossing her legs and doing the potty dance.
Normally during our morning routine the kids pile up on our bed and get dressed, have one minute play time and hang out until I am ready to scoot them out the door. Yesterday morning changed this. Sawyer in his new found independence, can now sit up on his own, even from a laying position, can lunge for an object without fear of the consequences & do a running crawl to get away from you. Gone are the days of infancy when he would just lay there and the thought of being mobile had not crossed his mind yet.
We where getting him ready & he decided to lunge off the bed for something. I was not quick enough & he landed square on his head, on the floor. Not just any floor but hardwood floor, with a hard bang. I swear it happened in slow motion, Sebastien & I dove for him as he fell outside our grasps.
He sat there for a few seconds and started crying, then I picked him up and started crying too.
He was fine after a few minutes of hugs & smothering kisses. By the time I dropped him off at daycare he had a big red shiner at the top of his forehead.
I spent the whole day worrying about him and thinking how bad of a mother I was for letting him fall off the bed. I kept hearing all those horrible jokes in my head about people being off because they were dropped on their heads as babies. By the time I made it home after work and 3 calls to daycare to make sure he was ok, the shiner was gone and all was forgotten by him especially after I bribed gave him a rice husk cookie.

He looks like this becasue his mother

dropped him on his head once.

You can't handle the tooth.....

After 2 months of constant drooling, shoving anything and everything in his mouth, & extra fussiness, we have had a break through!
I was feeding Sawyer dinner & decided to shove my finger in his mouth to feel around...hey it's so not an intrusion, it's my right!(well, at least until he can actually bite my finger in protest) There it was...in all its glory. I could feel the bumpy white mass popping up through  his gums! And just a few days ago the other one popped up to say hello too!
I should not complain because his teething has not been that bad (knocking on wood) compared to some horror stories I've heard, I am thankful both boys did and most likely (knocking on wood again) will go through this with little or no effort on our part. Only 18 more to go, so hopefully the rest will go easy peasy as the first two.




Looks like he can handle the tooth!



Ow! Charlee bit me.

This is Charlee (no she did not bite anyone, we just like teasing her)

She is our 4th kid and the royal pain in the butt. She is also my ally and my only common ground in the house full of boys! We girls stick together, well most of time. Sometimes the boys can lure her with anything edible, soft and plushy or a shoe. I don't hold a grudge because I always share my bacon with her and that right there is an unbreakable bond!
Charlee is a wonderful dog, she undertakes every day with such enthusiasm even when all the kids pile on top of her, stick their fingers in her eyes, ears and mouth, or even when I use her as my foot stool.

She is one of Sebastien's best buds!

 She once tried to eat a sour gummy worm, decided she didn't like it & left it in the middle of the floor. A few seconds later she walked past it and scooped it up in her mouth and spit it out. She did this like 10 times until I finally picked it up and threw it away. We just imagined her going "what's that? -oh candy, bleck" each & every time she did this.

She makes us smile everyday and loves everyone unconditionally.

She may chew on my shoes time to time or lick butter out of the container when your not looking but I truly think she has completed our family (even more so now that good ole' Junior is gone) &  is a perfect puzzle piece to fit into our hectic lives. Charlee was 8 weeks old when she joined the family & is now 4. She has been through it all watching Sebastien grow up and now Sawyer.  I can not imagine our lives with out her.